Invisible War: The United States and the Iraq Sanctions

Few people now remember that for many months after the First World War
ended in November 1918 the blockade of Germany, where the population
was already on the edge of starvation, was maintained with full
rigour. By the following spring, the German authorities were
projecting a 50 per cent increase in the infant mortality rate. In a
later memoir, John Maynard Keynes attributed the prolongation of
civilian punishment

to a cause inherent in bureaucracy. The blockade had become by that
time a very perfect instrument. It had taken four years to create
and was Whitehall’s finest achievement; it had evoked the qualities
of the English at their subtlest. Its authors had grown to love it
for its own sake; it included some recent improvements, which would
be wasted if it came to an end; it was very complicated, and a vast
organisation had established a vested interest. The experts
reported, therefore, that it was our one instrument for imposing our
peace terms on Germany, and that once suspended it could hardly be
reimposed.